I remember the moment with a clarity that has not faded. We had both interviewed for the same HR role at one of the colleges within the University of Oxford. Monica and I were not strangers to one another’s work. We had operated within the same institutional environment, and over time I had supported her development. She had entered the field from a different professional background and was still consolidating her grounding in HR practice, whereas I had accumulated a greater depth of experience and, in many instances, had been positioned as the one to guide, mentor, and clarify processes for others, including her. It is for this reason that the outcome of the interview did not simply surprise me; it unsettled something more fundamental in how I had understood experience, progression, and institutional decision-making.
I was informed that Monica had been appointed to the role. This, in itself, could have been absorbed into the familiar language of interview variability, that people perform differently, that panels make decisions based on criteria not always visible to candidates, that no process is entirely objective. What followed, however, made such explanations insufficient. I was told, without hesitation, that I could “help Monica.” It is a statement that appears, at first glance, to gesture toward collaboration. Yet, situated within the context of the decision that had just been made, it revealed a far more complex dynamic. I was not being told that I lacked the requisite knowledge or capability; rather, I was being positioned as someone whose expertise could be drawn upon without being formally recognised or institutionally authorised. What was being offered was not a role, but a relation, one in which my knowledge would remain available, but my authority would not.
In attempting to make sense of this, I found that explanations rooted solely in individual performance or merit were inadequate. The dissonance lay not in the idea that someone else had been appointed, but in the terms on which I was subsequently positioned. It is here that the concept of colourism becomes necessary, not as an abstract sociological category, but as an organising logic within professional spaces. Institutional discourse often treats race as if it operates uniformly, as though all racialised individuals are read in the same way and encounter similar conditions of inclusion or exclusion. Yet colourism disrupts this assumption by revealing the gradations through which race is lived, perceived, and managed. Those whose skin tone, features, or presentation are read as closer to whiteness frequently encounter a different set of institutional responses than those who are more visibly marked as Black.
As a dark-skinned Black woman, I am not afforded the ambiguity that sometimes mediates how others are read. My presence is immediate and legible, and it carries with it a set of interpretations that precede any professional interaction. There is no capacity for my identity to be softened or deferred; it is already inscribed onto the encounter. This is not simply a matter of visibility, but of how that visibility is interpreted within organisational cultures that continue to associate professionalism, neutrality, and authority with proximity to whiteness. In this context, passing is not merely a personal or cultural phenomenon, but a structural one. It is less about an individual’s desire to align with whiteness than about the ways in which certain bodies are received as less disruptive to established norms. Those who are able to occupy this space of relative ambiguity are often granted a degree of institutional ease that remains inaccessible to those whose difference is more immediately marked.
This is not to deny the complexity of mixed-race identity or the forms of marginalisation that accompany it. Belonging is not guaranteed by proximity to whiteness, and experiences of dislocation are real and significant. However, within professional environments, proximity to whiteness can nonetheless operate as a form of institutional currency. It can facilitate access to roles that require representation, relational engagement, and public visibility. It can render an individual more legible as a safe or appropriate embodiment of the organisation. What is at stake here is not a hierarchy of suffering, but a recognition that institutions do not simply exclude or include; they differentiate, calibrate, and position.
The statement that I could “help Monica” must therefore be understood within this broader context. It signalled that my expertise was acknowledged but not deemed suitable for visible authority. My knowledge was positioned as useful, even necessary, but my presence was not considered appropriate for the role that would require sustained interaction, representation, and relational leadership. What I encountered was not a dismissal of competence, but a form of containment. I was being invited to contribute without being permitted to lead, to support without being recognised, to remain present but not central. This dynamic, which I understand as delegated expertise without positional power, is one that recurs with particular frequency for darker-skinned Black women in institutional settings.
Such dynamics are not confined to formal decisions; they are reinforced through everyday interactions that accumulate over time. I recall working in an environment where I was the only Black person present. On one occasion, something trivial went missing, and the question of its disappearance was directed toward me with a casualness that made it difficult to confront. It was not framed as an accusation, yet it carried an assumption that required no explicit articulation. Moments such as these rarely find their way into official accounts of organisational culture, yet they shape how individuals come to understand their position within a space. They produce a form of embodied knowledge, a recognition of how visibility operates, of how quickly one can become the site onto which suspicion, humour, or unease is projected.
When considered together, these experiences reveal that inclusion within institutions is often conditional and unevenly distributed. It allows for participation, contribution, and even recognition, but it does not necessarily extend to authority or visibility. The distinction between being included and being positioned becomes critical here. To be included is to be present within the institution; to be positioned is to be granted a place within its hierarchy that carries weight, influence, and legitimacy. Colourism plays a significant role in mediating this distinction, shaping not only who enters organisational spaces, but how they are arranged within them.
What I experienced, then, was not an isolated incident or an unfortunate outcome of a competitive process. It was an instance of a broader institutional logic, one that operates quietly and often without explicit acknowledgement. It is a logic that permits the extraction of knowledge while regulating who is authorised to embody it. It recognises capability while simultaneously managing its visibility. And it does so in ways that are rarely named, but deeply felt. Once this pattern becomes visible, it is difficult to interpret such moments as neutral or incidental. They begin instead to appear as part of a coherent, if unspoken, system through which difference is organised and contained.
